A Bird In The Mouth

Have you ever had a cotton bud dipped in paraffin oil shoved up your bottom passage? Oh come now, you must have. It's actually not as bad as it sounds as long as whoever is holding the cotton bud isn't smoking. Well anyway, that's how my week started and it was all down hill from there really. My staff noticed that Badger and I weren't pooping quite as prolifically as we usually do, and that I was looking particularly unhappy, which is unusual for me; normally I'm such a happy little soul as you know.  It was immediately assumed that we both had a dose of impaction - constipation to you humans. We big butch boar guinea pigs are prone to this condition, especially as we get older. Our poops queue up inside our bottom passages like a crowd of teenage girls waiting for the doors to open at a Justin Bieber concert. Trouble is the doors never open and more and more teenage girls pile up and eventually go all squishy and smelly.  Eventually we have to have an enema and the afore-mentioned paraffin oil soaked cotton bud shoved up the old poo-shooter to lubricate things.

Anyway, as it turns out Badger had impaction, but I had what the vet thought was a bacterial infection of the gut. The fact that I squirted pea soup a la Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (only it originated from the opposite end) all over her nice clean overalls may have prejudiced her opinion. So I was given a course of antibiotics which partially worked and then I started to go backwards again, to such an extent that I had to have a night in hospital among the yelping dogs and meowing cats. Jeez those things can snore! I didn't get a moment's sleep. Consequently I was absolutely knackered the next day when I finally came home. My staff thought I was going to become a late guinea pig. I had to sleep in their room that night which was worse than the one I spent at the vet. At least the cats only snored through their upper orifice!

Well, I was still alive in the morning, if living with staff like mine can truly be called being alive. I did not feel well though. I refused to both eat and deliver bush chocolate, so it was back to the vet, who gassed me to sleep and fiddled with my teeth.  Poor Dr Cara had come in specially to look after me on her day off, The theory was that my teeth were dodgy and causing me pain, thus making me reluctant to eat, and obviously if you don't eat you don't produce bush chocolate and this very rapidly becomes serious for us guinea pigs. Our liver explodes or something.

Anyway despite the vet doing her very best for me I was still half dead by the middle of the week. I'd nibble a bit of basil for a moment and then have to have a lie down - a bit like my male staff after he's worn himself out doing the washing up. So my staff were quickly on the phone to a specialist guinea pig vet a hundred and twenty kilometres away in Brisbane and before I could say "Please don't make me drive to Brisbane with my male staff" I was driving to Brisbane with my male staff. Both staff actually. My female staff was navigating, yelling instructions like "Turn now!" without actually saying which way, and "Straight ahead here." at T-junctions. After nearly two hours of this kind of thing we arrived at the vet surgery and I was whisked in to see Doctor Vanessa who weighed me and didn't exactly endear herself to me by telling me I was too fat and that I shouldn't be eating the pet shop dry food because it contains grains, seed and nuts, all of which have atendency to contribute to exploding liver syndrom. I also shouldn't be eating parsley because it might block up my willy with stones and stop me peeing, or make the wee squirt out at odd angles like a hose pipe with a finger over the spout.

Why guinea pigs shouldn't eat parsley.

After what seemed like hours of Dr Vanessa telling me and my staff what I couldn't eat, she then started on a list was what I am allowed, and believe me, it was a lot shorter than her first list. She also recommended a certain brand of dry food that contains nothing tasty at all. My staff bought some, but I can't tell you what it tastes like because I refuse to sample it. I suppose I'll have to one day because it doesn't look like I'll be getting anything else. Dr Vanessa also told me that I have to eat a lot of hay, as if I was some sort of animal. Honestly, I don't why my staff listen to a word she says.

Once again my staff left me to have unspeakable things done to me by the vet. Once again they gassed me and poked about in my mouth. Then when I woke up they pronounced that there was a bird in there. A thrush apparently, and this thrush was making my mouth sore and stopping me from eating. I looked doubtfully up at Dr Vanessa as she stood over my hospital cage. If I'd had a thrush in my mouth I'm sure I would have known, what with all the wing flapping, pecking and the like. Not to mention the pooping. It turns out that they couldn't just removed this bloody bird for some reason (Maybe it had made a nest in my tonsils - I don't know.) and when my female staff came to collect me a couple of days later she was told that she'd have to squirt this horrid yellow liquid that smells of marzipan into my mouth. She was told that this would get rid of the thrush. It probably will too because it tastes bloody disgusting.

The source of all my problems.

 

So here I am back at home. I've lost a lot of weight and I'm still a bit limp, but I am better and for the moment I prefer to be hand fed. I also like to make my male staff feel guilty for making me have that awful yellow gunk to get rid of the bird in my mouth. I suppose one of these days it'll get as sick of the stuff as I am and fly out. I tell you what though, I'm never going to sleep with my mouth open again.

 

 

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE

 

Tell you what, you don't want to step in a puddle of Billy's anti-bird squirty stuff. It's really sticky and makes your feet smell worse than one of Billy's male staff's running shoes - and they've been banned under the chemical weapons treaty.

 

 



Silly Old Buggers' Syndrome

I'm afraid there aren't too many positives about having to go to work with my male staff four times a week. The drive there is a terrifying experience in itself. Partly because my male staff thinks his Hyundai Getz has automatic transmission. It hasn't of course because he was too tight fisted to pay the extra five hundred dollars. Nevertheless the salesman told him it was an automatic in order to get rid of him. Now he drives the forty minutes to work at one hundred and ten kilometres an hour in first gear and wonders why the engine is so noisy. Once he parked the car in the fast lane and went to have a pee on the median strip. When he returned a rather cross policeman had parked his police car behind the Getz and was peering through the window. Upon seeing my male staff he straightened and said. "Are you the driver of this vehicle sir?"
 "No," replied my male staff. "It's an automatic." At which point the policeman handed my male staff a piece of paper and said it would cost him two hundred and fifty dollars, which seems an awful lot for a piece of paper. If my male staff had wanted a piece of paper that badly he could have had a bit from the bottom of my cage. It might have been a bit damp but it would have only cost him a sprig or two of basil. Silly old sod.

It's even more frightening when it's been raining and the roads are wet. The worse the weather the faster he drives. I think he works on the theory that he should get to wherever it is he's going before he has an accident. In fairness though I should add that all Queenslanders seem to do this. After a shower of rain, when the road is nice and greasy everybody in the state seems determined to wipe themselves and each other out. It seems to be working for my male staff anyway, he's never had an accident so far. Mind you, he's seen dozens in his rear view mirror. Or at least he would have if he'd known that it's not just there for checking to see if his tie is straight.

Once we get to my male staff's office the swearing starts. Some of it from the ladies who work with him who realise that they have to spend all day with him, but mostly it emanates from my male staff, who's foul language is mostly directed at his computer. "F...king thing! What the f..k's wrong with you this morning. Work you f...king f...ker!" As you can imagine, This can be somewhat alarming for the clients that have come into the shop expecting to me greeted politely and sold a trip to Fiji.
 "You'll find it works a whole lot better if you turn the thing on." Says one of the ladies he works with, and the cursing gradually subsides into muttering, which continues until he has his first cup of coffee. Meanwhile I sit on the desk and look adorable enough to persuade the clients to upgrade to business class.

Since my male staff contacted multiple pulmonary emboli (Silly Old Buggers' Syndrome) he has to leave his desk and walk around the block every couple of hours or so to ensure that he doesn't die which would be inconvenient and spoil his day. I always go with him, sitting on his shoulder, so that I can bite his ear if he stays away from the office too long. Behind the office is a track that runs along the side of a tidal river. One say we met an elderly man watching a stingray flapping elegantly through the shallows.  My male staff and I stopped to say hello and to admire the fish. It was a pleasant chat until my male staff pointed out that it was a shame that people thought it a good idea to throw shopping trolleys into the river. At this point the nice old fellow turned into some sort of nasty fascist dictator. "When I was a young man," he said. "If some yob threw a shopping trolley into the river, or spat on the pavement, ot stepped out of line in any way the cops would pick him up one night, dive him to a quiet spot and break a few of his ribs. He'd never throw another shopping trolley in the river again that's for sure." He paused momentarily to point out an osprey perched on a nearby mobile phone tower. "These day," he continued, "the bloody do-gooders won't let them do that. The cops can't even clip the little shits' ears."
 "You don't think that breaking some kid's ribs is a little harsh for chucking a shopping trolley in a river do you, you shrivelled up, frustrated, nasty old sod?" I said, but he didn't understand me. I guess all he heard was "Wheek wheek wheek wheek wheek!" He just looked at my male staff and I as if we were both as mad as him. (True, fifty percent of us are.) "Bloody do-gooders," he continued his rant. "They're ruining Australia."
 "Listen you miserable so and so." I said. "It's better to be a do-gooder than the opposite." But again, I guess all he heard was "Wheek wheek wheek wheek wheek!" My male staff smiled at him and we returned to the office to abuse the computer again.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
I'm glad I didn't meet that old man. He'd probably want the police to cut my feet off for pooping on the floor.

The Weasel And The Haggis

Alan Jones, shock-jock presenter of a rabid right wing talk back radio show on Sydney's 2GB station is what my male staff calls a "Duck Egg". My female staff calls him a lot worse than that, but common decorum dictates that I don't repeat those naughty words. At a recent speech to about one hundred young liberals he joked that Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard's father who recently passed away died of shame. This is utter bush chocolate of course. Mr Jones may not like our Prime Minister and in that regard he's not Robinson Crusoe' but I have absolutely no doubt that her dad's heart was filled with pride at her achievements, especially given that she is the first female prime minister of one of the most misogynistic nations in the developed world. Anyway, can you imagine the outrage he would have stirred up among the listeners of his nasty little programme if Ms Gillard had said the same thing about his father. Even Badger can see that Jones is a weasel of a man. Actually, that's not fair. Weasels have a legitimate and useful place in natures chain. Jones' only purpose is to stir trouble, talk out of his bottom passage and to make money with his "cash for comments". Still at least now everyone knows what kind of "man" he is. He would have done well to observe Abraham Lincoln's words of wisdom. "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Of course, Jones has every right to say what he thinks, just as I have every right to run up his trouser leg and sink my teeth deep into his extreme right wing testostricles.

Alan Jones realises that he has a large hairy rodent climbing up his

leg towards his right wing testostricles.

Like most reasonable guinea pigs I will not waste further words on Jones. Instead I'd like to talk about a subject very close to my heart, not to mention my stomach - Food. My male staff loves animals. Not in the biblical sense you understand. That would be illegal in Queensland. I understand that it's frowned on even in Tasmania. No, what I mean is that he can't let a dog walked past him in the street without stroking it and talking to it as if it were mentally retarded in some way. "Who's a bootiful doggy zen? Ooo are, ooo is so bootiful. Goooood puppy, bootiful puppy." All this while totally ignoring the human attached to the other end of the leash, who is by now convinced that my male staff is in fact mentally retarded.  Actually both my staff are nuts about anything furry, feathery or scaly, so you can imagine how Badger and I suffer. Only my male staff was stupid enough to try to become vegetarian though despite evidence in the form of canine teeth that humans are supposed to be omnivores. For three months not a single gram of meat passed his lips; nothing with fur, feathers or scales was consumed, but gradually over that period he became more and more tired, not to mention hungry. He was almost arrested one day for biting a dog that he had stopped to stroke. My female staff persuaded the owner not to press charges by explaining that my male staff is a travel agent and is therefore not fully aware of his actions.  The dog owner not only dropped the charges but gave my staff ten dollars towards paying for his therapy.

Eventually, after his doctor explained that if he wanted to be both vegetarian and feel vaguely alive he'd have to spend about two hundred dollars a week on a variety of dietary supplements he ended his vegetarian career in spectacular fashion by consuming half a cow.

My male staff breaking his vegetarian diet.

Humans do eat the darndest things though. Yes, even guinea pigs aren't safe in certain parts of the world.  (See my previous blog post "Eaten by an Inca" http://pemery.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/eaten-by-inca.html I should explain that when you read this post, Pea and Chook are my staff. This was written at a time when I respected them enough to give them names.) The Japanese are very keen on seaweed I understand, which would explain why you see so many of them at the beach in Australia. The Scots eat small creatures called haggises (or is haggi the correct plural?) These creatures infest the dark back alleys of Glasgow feeding on the vomit of drunken pub-goers, or so my male staff tells me and he would never lie.

A freshly slaughtered haggis

Before my staff were married my male staff (who is British) introduced my female staff (who is Australian) to the delights of spotted dick - a traditional English steamed suet pudding containing sultanas or currants, served with thick custard. A portion of this has the consistency and weight of a house brick and a not dissimilar taste when my male staff makes it. Anyway you can imagine my female staff's alarm when my male staff suggested that they go back to his place, not for coffee but "to sample my spotted dick." Well, how could a girl resist such an offer. They were married soon after. This is yet another example of how food can bring people together.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
I've often wondered how the haggis gets about since it seems to have evolved without feet. Maybe it just rolls from one pool of vomit to the next.

Dirty Bottom

In my Piglish dictionary the definition of the phrase "Floor time" is Time spent on the lounge room floor, often pooping in inconvenient locations, chewing expensive furniture and avoiding capture by one's staff. I always do my best to live up to this definition, but Badger hasn't got the hang of avoiding capture. Instead of squealing like a girl, waddling away at top speed and glaring defiantly up at my staff like I do, he sits there like a stunned mullet and allows himself to be caught without resistance, while my staff praise the tidy mountain of bush chocolate they discover under his butt as they lift him up. He's so infuriatingly neat all the damned time. I mean, what's the point of having "floor time" if you're not going to scatter your bush chocolate willy-nilly so that one's aging staff have to crawl about on their hands and knees peering under heavy furniture in order to find it. They never do find it all by the way.  There's always a rock hard, crispy bit left over somewhere for them to enjoy treading on.

It was during a recent period of "floor time" that I heard second hand as my staff chatted amongst themselves. that the proprietor of their favourite coffee shop thinks I am a hamster. A hamster! That's like calling Usain Bolt a jogger. Hamsters are inferior to guinea pigs in so many ways. Sure they can stuff their cheek pouches so full that they look like a furry puffer fish. Sure they can run like billy-oh on a squeaky wheel all night, keeping their staff awake so that in the morning they're as bad tempered as a squirrel who's lost his nuts. But do they write Mr O'Barmer's speeches? Do they have the ear of the Australian Prime Minister? They'd probably bite the ear of the Australian Prime Minister if they had the chance - vicious little brutes. Once they hang on with those savage incisors of theirs they can be very difficult to dislodge. My male staff's mad sister had to wear her two pet hamsters as earrings for several days because one day when she was cuddling them they latched on to her lobes and wouldn't let go. I think she finally got them off with a crowbar or something. That was when she worked for the post office and she received several admiring comments about her new fashion accessories from her customers.

What's the difference between a hamster and a puffer fish? Not much actually.

Mind you, it has to be said that my male staff's mad sister doesn't have a lot of luck when it comes to pets. A while ago she had a beautiful rescued racing greyhound called Sandy. Humans who are owned by greyhounds will know that unlike guinea pigs whose butts constantly drag along the floor, greyhounds' bottom passages never, ever touch the ground. Whether sitting or laying down there is always a gap of a good inch. This can often lead to having a dirty bottom - bits of dried bush chocolate that stick to their butt fur. "Clinkers" to use the scientific term, because they are unable to wipe it of on grass or carpet.

Mad sister was in the habit of leaving her handbag on the floor by the side of the settee of an evening while she and her long suffering husband watched their favourite programmes on the telly after a day's work. Shows like "Dancing With The C List celebrity's Sister's Next Door Neighbour" and "Britain Had Talent Once, But Now It's Got One Direction". Anyway, mad sister had remarked to long suffering husband that Sandy had a clinker on her butt that needed removing, but then they became engrossed in whatever they were watching on the telly and forgot about it. In any case, by the time they went to bed they noticed that the clinker had gone.

The next day a the post office, mad sister and some of her workmates were sitting chatting in the staff room having morning tea when her cell phone rang in her handbag. She yanked it out from the jumble of tissues, spare knickers and lipstick, but as she did so Sandy's clinker came with it, describing a graceful arc through the air and landing with a plop in her supervisors tea. It sank momentarily and then bobbed to the surface where it floated like a little brown life raft. The chatter stopped and everyone peered into mad sister's supervisor's cup as if trying to read her tea leaves.
  "Please excuse me," said mad sister. "I must just take this call." and then walked as casually as she could from the staff room as if it was the most natural thing in the world to throw dog poo into one's supervisor's tea.

Ah well, I suppose being mistaken for a hamster is not too bad. My male staff's nickname at school was "Donkey". Those of you with a vivid imagination will immediately think that it must have had something to do with a certain part of his anatomy. He likes to think so too, but he's dreaming. Sometimes he walks stark naked past my cage in the morning, so I know for sure that isn't the reason. When he was a kid he had a bad stammer and one day he brought a school friend home to play. My male staff's mum heard his friend call him "Donkey" and after his friend had gone she asked my male staff why his friend called him that.
  "I d...d...d...d...don't know M...M...Mum." He answered. "He aww...he aww...he aww...he aww...he always calls me that."

My male staff as a child.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE

Look into my eyes. You are sleepy, sleeeeepy, sleeeeeeeeepy. Right. Now give me a foot massage.

 

Pauline Hanson And The Naked Vicar

Who remembers Pauline Hanson? She's the former fish and chip shop owner who wrapped herself patriotically in an Australian flag and then set about destroying Australia's reputation for racial tolerance with her ignorance and xenophobia. My staff gets worried when politicians start wrapping themselves in their national flag. They reckon it usually means that they don't have any sensible policies, and so it transpired with Pauline.  Anyway, it turned out that she had no idea what xenophobia was until she was told by a television talk show host. She came close to saying that Australian Aboriginal people should go back to where they belong. The sad thing is that when she stood for parliament she won a seat. She's since lost it again and despite a few attempts to regain it only a few extremists voted for her and she went off in huff to Britain because Australia was admitting too many immigrants. She obviously hadn't visited Britain since about 1950. Modern Britain is no place for a bigot. Anyway she's back in Australia now. Apparently she turned on her heel and got back on the same Qantas plane she's arrived on when a nice Sikh man in a turban asked for her passport when she arrived at Heathrow.  But that's the trouble with bigots. Not to put it too delicately, they're as thick as bats' bush chocolate. Certainly Pauline is not exactly the sharpest piece of bush chocolate in the cage. In fact she makes Badger look like a candidate for MENSA.

There can be only three possible reasons for wrapping yourself in your national flag.

1. You are a dangerous nationalist.

2. You are a bigot.

3. Your washing machine is broken and you have no clean clothes.

Therefore it is a great shame that the then Australian Prime Minister John Howard was panicked by her brief electoral success into adopting many of her blatantly racist ideas. She was not against immigration per say, as long as the immigrants - non-white ones anyway, were not coming to Australia. For a signatory to the Refugee Convention like Australia the legislation that the Howard government put in place, like temporary protection visas and offshore processing were illegal because they were a blatant attempt to deter refugee arrivals, especially those arriving by boat. Under the Refugee Convention signatory nations are not permitted to deter refugee arrivals. Neither are they permitted to ship arrivals off to a third nation for processing if that nation is not a signatory of the convention. These poor buggers were dumped in Nauru - a sorry lump of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and while Nauru has since signed the convention, they hadn't at the time that Howard put his arrangements in place. If only our politicians spent a little less time shedding crocodile tears over the poor sods who die making the journey to Australia on leaky Indonesian fishing boats, and more time making it easier for refugees to come to Australia safely.

This so called "illegal boat arrival" was sent to Nauru for processing despite being the first ever cavy to row all the way from Peru to Australia.

To compound this injustice, five years after John Howard was booted out of office Julia Gillard's government has similarly been panicked by the Pauline Hanson influenced opposition party into reinstating offshore processing. It's still illegal, because it's still supposed to be a deterrent to refugees.  Naturally the media and politicians who should know better have been stirring the pot by calling asylum seekers who arrive by boat "illegal arrivals". They are not illegal arrivals. In fact they have a more valid legal status than the system that sends them to Nauru for processing. And all this because of a dumb red headed fish and chip shop owner decided that she didn't like people who are not the same colour as her. I bet you didn't expect all that from a guinea pig did you?

Hey ho. A much nicer human female altogether is my female staff's mum. Badger and I like her very much because she has a pot of parsley at home and always brings us a sample when she comes to visit. She has some pretty good stories too. Stories that often embarrass my female staff. For example when my female staff and her slightly older frantic sister were little my females staff always struggled to get a word in edge-ways because her frantic sister talked so much. This being the case, my female staff had to get her tuppence worth in however and whenever she could. One day while at the dentist, frantic sister was yakking away to the elderly and somewhat prim receptionist as my female staff stood hopping from one foot to the other practically wetting herself with frustration at not being able to find a gap in frantic sister's flow. Then frantic sister took a breath. This was my female staff's big chance. My female staff's mum suddenly had a premonition of what was about to happen but wasn't quick enough to stop it. "We've got Mrs Foops at home, and she lets crackers." was my female staff's contribution to the conversation. Non-Aussies may like to know that Mrs Foops is a traditional imaginary person to whom mishaps are attributed. "Letting crackers" is the passing of bottom wind.
.
Not long after that my female staff's paternal grandpa and grandma came to visit from New Zealand.  Her grandpa was a kind but austere man, an old school Anglican vicar. Walking around the outside of the house to put the washing on the line she came across my female staff and her frantic sister standing on a chair peering through the bathroom window. She put her head between the two children's.
  "What are you looking at?" She asked
  "We wanted to see what grandpa does in the bath." Answered the girls, as to my female staff's mum's horror she noticed her father in law soaking in the bath just as he looked up from washing his dangly bits to find the three female members of the household staring at him through the window.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE.
If I didn't have one white foot Pauline Hanson would probably have me sent to Nauru for processing, whatever that is.

Two Eggs And A Cocktail Sausage

Most Saturday mornings we all drive into town. Badger and I are bundled into the car, where we sit on a towel on the dashboard. We have to sit on a towel because with my male staff's erratic driving we're likely to slide off into my female staff's handbag and never be seen again. We'd be doomed to forever wander it's dark, dank, dripping depths searching for a way out among the used tissues, keys, cell phones, lipstick, address books, purses, loose change, old parking tickets, packets of headache tablets. (I've never understood why humans eat headache tablets. The last thing I'd want is a headache.) Badger once ate some of my female staff's lipstick. I think he mistook it for a carrot. By the time he'd finished he looked like a skunk in drag. The worst thing about finding oneself lost within my female staff's handbag is that there is very little to eat. (Apart from lipstick obviously.) Last time I was in there I got so desperate that I ate half of her drivers licence and that made me very unpopular. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure whether it was that or the fact that I peed on her cell phone that upset her most.

My female staff's handbag. Seriously, don't ever get lost in it. And if you do, don't pee on her cell phone.

Anyway, today we sat on the towel on the dashboard, so all was well, except that we had a nerve jangling view through the windscreen as my male staff drove us into town at a speed that Lewis Hamilton would not have been ashamed of. Once he gets the scent of coffee in his cavernous, fur filled nostrils he's unstoppable.
Zooming past the town's sports field we saw that it was covered with red and yellow domes, dozens and dozens of them. It was like looking at the face of a huge green teenager with a really bad dose of acne. You might think that a strange analogy, but I rather like it. My female staff said they were tents. Moments later we screeched to a halt in front of my staff's favourite coffee shop. My male staff likes to stop the car by gently running into the back of other vehicles. He says it saves wear and tear on the brakes. On this occasion the owner of the nice gold Aston Martin Lagonda was nowhere to be seen, so there were no threats or fisticuffs which is a shame. Anyway there was only a little bit of yellow paint from my staff's Hyundai Getz on the rear bumper and only a small scratch, certainly nothing to get upset about.

Badger and I were plucked from our towel and carried towards the coffee shop, but halfway across the road  
they stopped abruptly with a hissed exclamation of what sounded like "Holy ship!" Naturally Badger and I looked up and down the street in search of some sort of religious vessel. Seeing only a queue of cars waiting for my staff to get out of the middle of the road we looked instead at the coffee shop. It was awash with lycra. There wasn't a single free table. Every seat was occupied by ancient cyclists - mamils and mawils as my staff like to call them. (Middle Aged Men In Lycra and Middle Aged Women in Lycra.) Some of them were even venerable enough to qualify as ofils and owils. (Old Farts In Lycra and Old Women In Lycra.) Other mamils, mawils, ofils and owils were milling around outside the coffee shop fiddling with their bikes or stretching their ancient limbs. My male staff said that if he ever became Prime Minister (God help us!) he'd make it a capital offence for anyone over the age of forty to wear a lycra cycling outfit in public. Anyway it seems that hundreds of these cyclists had ridden from the town of Kilcoy, over the range to our little town, and were camping for the night on the sports field before cycling on in the morning to Noosa, presumably to invade someone else's favourite coffee shop.

There's only one thing worse than a lycra cycling outfit.

Badger whispered to me that he thought the journey must have been too long for some of them and that there couldn't have been enough toilets along the route because most of the cyclists seemed to have had accidents of the brown and smelly kind. The backs of their lycra pants appeared to be full of lumpy stuff. We assumed it was bush chocolate. Even guinea pigs know that older humans can have those sort of issues. They even walked as though their pants were full of something warm and squishy. My female staff assured us that it wasn't the case, and that the lumpy stuff in their pants was padding. Badger looked at her doubtfully and told me that he thought most of them had enough natural padding, especially around the stomach. Many of the male cyclists had obviously brought their own lunch with them, though why they'd had to shove it down the front of their lycra pants I'm not sure. The funny thing about male cyclists is that they all seem to have the same thing for lunch - a cocktail sausage and a couple of hard boiled eggs. As for the female lycra clad cyclists, it looked as though they were competing in a camel-toe contest. In any case it was enough to put my staff off their coffee, which was just as well since the coffee shop was full to bursting point anyway.

Veteran cyclist Lance Arsetrong was disqualified from the Kilcoy to Noosa bike ride for using a performing enhancing substance.

In no time flat my staff had us back in the Hyundi Getz. We reversed into a shiny new Lexus and shot off up the road towards home for a cup of instant coffee and a stale biscuit. After which they stomped about the house in a foul mood until it was time for wine and cheese on the deck at sunset. Ah. Happy days.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
When I ate the lipstick I also got it all over my toenails which Billy found most attractive - unfortunately. I had to spend most of the rest of the day with my butt firmly jammed into the corner of my cage.

A Talking Hippo

I like to sit on my female staff's lap of an evening. If I'm in a generous mood I'll allow her to brush my fur, massage my feet and feed me treats. Then while Badger is busy peeing on my male staff's lap and my male staff occupies himself with placing Badger carefully on the floor, peeling of his moist trousers (Much to any house guests consternation.) and stuffing them in to the washing machine, my female staff and I watch telly. Just occasionally, squeezed between commercials for acne cream, cat food and laundry liquid, (which thanks to Badger my staff are very interested in.) are some programmes. You have to pay close attention. Blink and you'll miss them. A two hour movie on commercial telly lasts about six hours these days thanks to all the commercial breaks. Because of this my staff and I have not seen a movie all the way through for months.

It's easy to tell when my male staff has had Badger on his lap. (Or so he claims.)

We all generally fall asleep long before the closing titles. Many's the time I've woken up on my female staff's lap to find a late night infomercial on the telly and my fur soaked with my female staff's drool, while she snores like a chainsaw. On such occasions I have to bite her thigh to wake her up so that she can put me to bed and top up my dry food.  Anyway, the other evening I woke earlier than usual, I don't know why, maybe my male staff passed bottom wind or perhaps an extra large drop of my female staff's drool landed on my nose. Whatever the reason, I looked up to see that the movie on the telly was "The Greatest Story Ever Told." There was John Wayne dressed as a Roman Centurion but still looking like a cowboy. He was squinting up at Max von Sydow aka Jesus, who looked remarkably well considering he'd been nailed to a cross and had his side pierced by a Roman spear. I fully expected Mr Wayne to say to Jesus "Git aahf your craahss an' drink your milk" in that slow I've just drunk half a bottle of vodka voice of his.  But no, what he said was "Trooly this mayan is the son of Gaaahd." in his best Roman soldier accent.

John Wayne as a Roman centurion has to be one of the worst pieces of casting in the history of Hollywood, surpassed only by the disastrous casting of Ronald Reagan as the President of the United States of America. That was truly appalling, he was completely unbelievable in the role. No nation on earth would ever elect someone as obviously affected by dementia as he was - certainly not twice.

Ronald Reagan spent much of his second term believing he was a moose.

I must have drifted off to sleep again soon after that because when I awoke John Wayne had gone and been replaced by what I at first assumed to be a talking hippo. Having blinked the sleep from my eyes and wiped away the worst of my female staff's drool from my face I saw that it was in fact the world's richest woman - Gina Rinehart. Her vast fortune comes from digging holes like a demented mole all over Australia and then selling whatever comes out the holes to the Chinese and the Indians.

Ms Rinehart takes a short post lunch power nap.

What she was saying gave me a proper piggy giggle. She was rabbiting on about how Australia has become too expensive and that companies like hers should be given tax breaks, especially if they want to dig holes in the north of the country. The billionaire then went on to say that Australian workers are being paid far too much and that in other parts of the world people are paid two dollars a day - like that's a good thing.. Goodness me, even Badger knows that it is the mining companies themselves that have made Australia such an expensive place to live.  The resources boom is a real double edged sword, because while it generates untold wealth for a few and contributes very nicely thank you to the nations coffers, it also makes it hard for companies outside the mining sector to compete with the stupid wages being offered by Ms Reinhart and the like. It's bumping up rent and house prices in dumpy towns like Mackay, so that anyone not employed by the mines can no longer afford to live there and visitors have to fork out vast sums of money for a night in a the type of motel that makes you itch when you see the bedding, let alone actually lay on it.

Of course hippos are as much entitled to express their opinions as guinea pigs, but for one particular billionaire hippo to complain about the problems of doing business in Australia when the hippo itself to a large extent is contributing to many of the problems is a bit rich, like Gina Rinehart. It's also not a good look for a billionaire who inherited a vast fortune from her Father to be telling Mr and Mrs Average Australian that they should be working for less. This so incensed my male staff that he dropped his pants and mooned the television, much the the surprise of his Mother-in-Law who was sitting the the sofa at the time. Fortunately my female staff was asleep and didn't witness this outrage, but for some reason her mum didn't want her usual sausage and eggs for breakfast the next morning.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE 
None of this has got anything to do with my feet, or anyone else's, for that matter so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to say. That being the case, I'll just publish a very cute photo of myself and have done with it.